Encyclopedia of Microtonal Music Theory

canasta scale

(canasta = Spanish, "basket")

[Joe Monzo]

A 31-tone scale belonging to the miracle family of temperaments, derived from an optimal MIRACLE generator, and in one form a subset of 72-edo. For its relatively small size, this scale approximates an enormous number of 3-limit, 5-limit, 7-limit, and 11-limit just-intonation harmonic structures.

In keeping with the name of its smaller relative, the blackjack scale, it was dubbed "canasta" on the misconception that the card game used 31 cards. Those who know the game are aware that this is not the case, and for a while the scale was called miracle-31. But later, when the meaning of the Spanish word was discovered, it was decided after all that "canasta" was an entirely appropriate name to describe this scale which contains so many harmonic resources, and that miracle could therefore be reserved to designate the generator itself and the whole family of tunings.

Below are graphs of the cents-values of the pitches in a typical Canasta chain, illustrated on the left as a scale and on the right as a chain of generators from -15 to +15 secors.

Below are the same graphs, but this time with the y-axis quantized into 41edo instead of 12edo, which shows how closely 41edo approximates the 72edo version of Canasta. (There are 4 degrees of 41edo in a secor.)

Finally, below are the same graphs again, but this time with the y-axis quantized into 31edo, which shows how closely 31edo approximates the 72edo version of Canasta. (There are 3 degrees of 31edo in a secor.)

Below is a more accurate assessment of exactly how the 72-edo and 31-edo versions of canasta differ: